


An Ending (Happy Ones Aren't For Us)

by slow-smiles (the_irish_mayhem)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, DarkOne!Belle, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-19
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 06:50:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3968539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_irish_mayhem/pseuds/slow-smiles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Belle knows what she has to do.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>An alternate ending for the S4 finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Ending (Happy Ones Aren't For Us)

**Author's Note:**

> This started out between me and thehalliebadger on tumblr as a sort of prediction/headcanon on how Belle's arc could evolve. Because we both thought that DarkOne!Belle would be fascinating, and are both incredibly fed up with her being used as Rumple's plot device.

Belle knows what she has to do.

She watches the light go out from her husband’s eyes, and despite what she knows in her mind, her heart still weeps. Her heart weeps for the good man she thought she had started to see again, for all the moments they will never get to make up. 

(Another deeper, hidden part of her feels relief. She’ll never be lied to again, won’t be manipulated or used by him. She’ll finally feel safe in her home, with Will, in her own skin.)

Still. She cries.

Because after everything, she still loves him. She knows she shouldn’t, but the ache still claws into her chest when she thinks about what she’s going to have to do.

There’s no time for help. No time for anyone but her to fix this.

Rumple’s body curls, shivers, and then the gold sheen is eating away his skin. The curse is killing what was left of Rumplestiltsken, leaving only the Dark One in its wake. The full Dark One form is something that had never followed them from the Enchanted Forest. It belonged back in their land, back amongst their past, the people he’d hurt and wronged. She knows a lot of them had come to Storybrooke with the curses, but to see it amongst the glass and wood of the shop, inside the modern clothes sets Belle on edge.

Her hand tightens around the dagger. Her fist shakes, heart beating a double time. She’s... she doesn’t hurt people. She’s a woman of learning. She uses her wits and wills over swords and daggers. 

But she’s learning something new now.

He’s still on the ground. She should strike now, before he stands. Before he starts spewing his poisonous, velvet-covered words at her, before she lets him weaken her resolve once more.

He’d said the Dark One was only held back by his force of will. Her research with Baelfire in the Enchanted Forest had revealed as much; the lore had gone deeper than that, saying that the power of the Dark One was chained to a person so that it could not destroy the realms.

Her lungs heave, the words in the ancient tomes spilling through her mind. 

_\--the darkness was woven into a curse--tethered to a single soul under the control of a dagger--the darkness must be tethered, else it will destroy every realm, and everyone in it--_

Without a tether, it will destroy the realms. Without Rumple, the Dark One will terrorize this one.

Neither of those things can happen.

So even though her fist shakes--

_the best teacup is chipped_

\--and her heart cries--

_you brought light into my darkness_

\--she raises the dagger.

Belle French is many things. A princess. A scholar. A librarian. A friend. A daughter. A  _wife_.

But there is one thing she will not allow herself to be.

A victim.

She plunges the dagger into Rumplestiltsken’s heart.

The magic courses through her like an electric shock, her muscles spasming, locking her hand around the dagger, and then she feels it,  _really_  feels it--painful, toxic, dark, poisonous, but  _beautiful_ and she feels it slide over her, into her, like the darkest and deepest desires she could have only dreamed of in her worst moments.

Her body hums, unaccustomed to the presence of magic, but it settles into her like she was born to use it and she things that maybe this is what she was meant for all along. Because she is the master of her own fate. Not Regina, not Hook, not Will.

She revels in the darkness because she’s never let herself do it before--she’s always had to be his light. She’s always had to be his everything, and now she remembers again why she kicked him over the town line. Because she is Belle French. She does not exist for him.

The transfer is completed in a brilliant explosion of light. The color is a mystery, but it blinds her eyes and sends magic rocketing from her fingertips.

When she opens them, every single glass object in the shop is blown out, the glass cutting into her concerning her for a moment before she realizes she can heal herself.

And then she realizes she’s not alone.

“Belle?” It sounds like Emma.

Belle knows she’s covered in blood. The dagger is covered in blood, now with her named blazed across the side. Belle French. Belle French. Belle French. “That’s my name,” she says, almost to herself, as she runs her fingers across her name.

“Belle, what happened?” That’s Snow.

They all sound so worried. Don’t the realize that she’s free? That she saved all of them? Knowing the band of heroes in this town, it was only a matter of time before one of them stepped up to the task of killing the Dark One. Taking on his darkness. She’s done them all a favor.

She once dreamed of adventure. This was certainly not what she pictured when she had read her books in the library, leaned against her mother’s side as they read about far off lands and dashing princes in disguise.

Time has taught Belle French that the dashing prince in disguise isn’t so dashing.

“I did what I had to do,” she tells them, moving herself to a standing position, but she hasn’t turned to face them yet. Her husband’s body lies crumpled beneath shattered glass. “He was dying. He would die, but the Dark One would live on.”

“You killed him,” says Killian. He doesn’t sound judgmental, which she understands. He’s wanted to see her husband dead for so long.

“I did.”

“You’re the Dark One now,” he says, no question in his voice.

She turns to face them, dagger in hand. She feels this magnetism to it, like it feels right in her hand. Like if she were to be parted from it, part of herself would be torn away. She understands now why Rumple never wanted to let it go.

She realizes it still has blood on it. Rumple’s blood.

How she loved him, once. She had almost forgiven him when she crashed into his shop after his disastrous attempt at rewriting the book. She’d been looking for a reason, any reason at all, to forgive him before she realized she didn’t have to forgive him.

Belle French is her own story, so she wipes the dagger off on her skirts, and smiles.

She holds it up for the heroes to see. “I think I’m going to keep this.”

 


End file.
